It was always fairly obvious that dark-skinned bearded types (especially those with hooks for hands) wouldn't find much sympathy when getting extradited to the US on terror charges. But since those bankers got done by the not even slightly reciprocal Extradition Treaty a few weeks back the pressure from middle England is mounting.

"Gareth Hardwick, a director of Staffordshire-based Grafton International, said: 'I am outraged at the predicament UK executives find themselves in as a result of the extradition agreement the UK has with the US but the US does not have with the UK.

"'It makes me fearful of any legislation connected with terrorism. The Government needs to act swiftly to protect those UK citizens already in the system.'"

Don't threaten the white middle classes with your terror laws, Tony - they don't like it up 'em, and are rather more inclined to vote than the usual targets...

Interesting survey results that I'd missed via Brian J Phillips suggest that only 1.5% of EU citizens have migrated to another member state to live. Stuck me as rather low and, predictably, has been used by our Eurosceptic friends as yet more "proof" that no one wants or needs the EU.

I don't deny for a moment that cross-border mobility is likely to be fairly low - after all, people generally tend to continue living relatively close to where they grew up, bar the occasional shunt to a big city to find work, and the percentage of people in the EU with a strong enough grasp of a second language to enable them to work in another country is (I'd imagine) still well under 50% of the population even on the mainland.

But still, if the survey was of people from all 25 member states, the figures would be heavily skewed by the 10 new members - especially the ex-Communist ones. They've not even had two years to start migrating, after all... A breakdown showing the figures for individual countries would (I'd guess) show a much higher incidence of cross-border migration in the 15 older members.

A bit more digging brings up more figures (though despite ten minutes trawling the Commission's website, no sign of the survey itself...), and it soon becomes fairly clear that the movement figures are deliberately being presented as low - why else would they have asked so many detailed questions about why people AREN'T moving?

Yep - it's all intended as initial publicity for the European Year of Worker Mobility, the press release for which provides yet more statistics (from the same survey, it would seem). By showing that few people have yet taken up the opportunity to migrate across borders, it's easier to promote it as an innovative new approach to finding work. (Even if the Commission singularly failed to present the thing in this way, thus utterly buggering up the message...)

But after all that messing about with demographics, the thing that most struck me was utterly unrelated. What I'm intrigued by is why it took the Telegraph two weeks to report on this survey (it was published back on the 14th February, from what I can tell).

What the hell is wrong with the Commission's PR department? A big new initiative to show the potential benefits of EU membership to individuals and promote economic growth in the process, and bugger all press coverage.

If there's one thing the EU should have learned from last year, it's that it hasn't got its communication strategy sorted. It failed to sell the constitution, and failed to present a coherent message in the aftermath. It has begun to look increasingly uncertain and confused about its direction, which is hardly going to inspire confidence. But it is a prime opportunity to have a major re-think and overhaul of old strategies, as I argued the other day.

Presentation has always been the EU's biggest problem. The terminology is dull, the legislation boring, the initiatives frequently bland, and there is the constant danger of appearing a little too much like the less than pleasant prior continent-spanning organisations - be they Roman, Catholic, Napoleonic or Fascist - for comfort. But come on, they surely must be able to do a better job than that? Two measly articles that only appear online, not in print, for what should be a major campaign?

It's time for a re-vamp of the Commission's entire PR strategy - starting with the awful-looking Commission website (perhaps along the lines of the European Parliament's?). A more accessible (searchable would help) news service, a few RSS feeds, and a little bit of a human face beyond dear Margot's rather unfortunate attempts on her tedious blog would on their own help make the task of finding out just what it is that the most hated EU institution does just that little bit easier. That's all that's needed - for inaccessibility breeds distrust. If you can't find out what the Commission's up to, you're more likely to assume it's up to no good.

I mean, hell - I'm no PR expert, but I could come up with a better strategy for promoting the EU and Commission in five minutes. Accessibility is the key, and then just a little bit of self-awareness - another thing the EU as a whole has struggled with throughout its existence.

Yes, it's hard to make something as interminably dull as the European Union seem interesting and exciting - but the sheer blandness and lack of imagination of the presentation at the moment is like nothing more than adding tapioca to your rice pudding for flavour. You don't want more blandness - you need to spice it up with some jam. As with rice pudding, a large number of people will still find the end product revolting, but a good number will be able to stomach it rather better.

I'm very tempted to offer a bounty on Charles Clarke. If that big-eared, bestubbled waste of oxygen doesn't keel over and die soon, his fatuous, hypocritical bile is going to give me a hernia. It's him or me, and I'm not going down without a fight. He's a big lad, but I reckon I could take him. I mean, what the hell is this?

"I hope the Lords will recognise that this manifesto commitment, voted through by the elected chamber, should be respected"

Listen Charles, you asinine moron - the precise wording of the manifesto was

"rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports"

The opposition peers are actually helping you to stick to your sodding manifesto, you hideous waste of sperm. Now kindly crawl into a secluded corner and die (preferably taking Blair with you).

Jim Bliss is back. Was always worth a gander over at the now-defunct Where There Were No Doors, as well as his all too rare outings at The Sharpener. He's had a few months off, so time to encourage him to start writing more and stuff.

Remember all that guff at Live8 and the G8 summit last summer - all the Geldof and chums self-congratulatory, self-promoting heartfelt appeals, all the Blairy-fairy rubbish about saving starving Africans?

Well, it's had precisely tit all impact - aid groups are predicting death tolls of upwards of 11 million over the coming months as vast swathes of central/eastern Africa head into the spring after two years without rainfall.

They have no food, no water, and no hope. They are already dying, and it hasn't even begun to get REALLY hot yet.

Time to help out, folks:

Red Cross Horn of Africa Bulletin

Christian Aid East Africa appeal

Oxfam Food Crisis appeal

Bugger bugger bugger bugger bugger. My passport ran out three weeks ago. Due to being an ill-organised bastard I forgot to send off the renewal forms. And today, biometric passports start to be introduced.

You know what? Fuck that for a laugh. They're supposedly being brought in purely to "save us the trouble of having to get a visa when we go to America" - but I have precisely no desire ever to go to America, ta very much. And if I did have to go, I'd have no problem applying for a visa. So they're going to extract a load of information about me I don't want them to have on the off-chance I might decide to go to a place I have no wish to go. Brilliant. Nice one, intrusive government types.

Update: The peers are on the case - but what's all this?

"Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers are dropping their previous insistence that the scheme should not go ahead until the full costs of the project are revealed."

Eh? You what now? Idiots.

It's three years to the day since I started this place going, but I have precisely nothing profound or interesting to add to this post from August, celebrating a solid year of blogging. So have a random collection of vaguely interesting things instead:

First up, have a gander at an interesting interview with Chris Patten on Europe, the EU and the world, and the Boston Globe on why Europe's economy may be doing better than many have assumed (both via the always excellent Political Theory Daily Review). Atlantic Rift on the Tories and the EU is also worth look - especially taken along with Patten's judgement that David Cameron "doesn't know very much" about the EU...

Also well worth a shufty - as there's only a month to go before the elections there - is Cafe Babel's series of articles on Italy - in particular this one on Berlusconi's enduring electoral appeal:

"It would be too simple to dismiss Berlusconi's voters as pitiable immature citizens without a sense of political responsibility"

Much the same could be said for people who still vote for Blair... So If you haven't already, read the angry Rachel on the many reasons she's pissed off with Labour. (Our dear messrs McKeating and Hamster on the fact that we're being led by a man who reckons only his invisible friend can tell him what to do should also be on your reading list for today.) If you haven't yet, also check out Liberty Central - still finding its way, but showing promise.

In any case, if you look at Belarus, we should count ourselves lucky we've only got Blair to cope with. Our man Worstall, meanwhile, highlights a prime example of ill-informed bullshit from a journalist/blogger seemingly claiming that Belarus is actually all honey and roses. Amusingly, immediately after telling us not to believe anyone who says that a dictatorship which routinely uses political violence is, erm... a dictatorship that routinely uses political violence, the chap posts bemoaning "the appalling arrogance of journalists who tell the families of murder victims not to feel angry" - methinks the irony may be lost on the chap... (How DO these people get work?) Update: There's more on Belarus dodginess at Publius Pundit, Radio Free Europe and plenty of info at br23 blog, which will shortly be joining the blogroll.

Oh, and I've been tagged with a meme - but as it's all about music, which for no apparent reason I never really listen to, my answer to all the questions would be "no idea", so doubt it would make particularly interesting reading. Much like this post, really...

In other news, is it just me, or is Blogger getting increasingly shit? Comment spam is escalating, crappy spam blogs are everywhere, and the server seems to be going offline every other day. Perhaps it's time to start pondering a move - anyone able to fill me in on the cheapest options?

Update: This week's Britblog Roundup is up for more linky goodness...

The first thing I thought when I heard Tessa Jowell has split from her husband?

PR stunt.

Does that make me a bad person, or simply say something really rather nasty about this government?

Sunday Update: Official denials that it was a PR stunt? So we can take it as confirmed that that is precisely what it was then? Good good...

How long can they keep the pressure up on Tessa Jowell before it starts to look personally vindictive? How long before she does a Cherie Blair style emotional press conference, with the hint of a tear in her eye and yet more protestations of an innocence born of the least communicative marriage in the country? How long - if what she claims is true - before said marriage ends? After all, who'd want to be married to someone who keeps £344,000 gifts from mysterious strangers a secret? Reminds me of that God-awful Indecent Proposal flick... Just what was it that Tessa's hubby had to do to get that cash again?

Yet more proof that you can't believe the polls... 57% is a landslide in a thee-way race, second choice votes not withstanding. Huhne and Hughes evidently didn't have a chance.

Now can we finally get some kind of standardised form of writing the guy's sodding name? It's MENZIES, not Ming. You don't go around spelling Edinburgh "Edinburuh", so why spell his name differently?

Either way: Blair, Cameron and Campbell - those Campaign for and English Parliament bods must be pleased to have the three main parties led by people with Scottish surnames...

Well, if Tony Blair says she did nothing wrong then I for one am convinced that Tessa Jowell is an ideal person to have in the Cabinet. Then again, having Blair's "full confidence" didn't do Mandelson or Blunkett much good...

£430 million and the roof's still dodgy. Nice work, Scottish devolution types... For future reference, I did woodwork at school for a bit - I could probably knock you up a functional debating chamber for, ooohhh... Let's say £50k. (Note: Price may increase exponentially at the taxpayers' expense based purely on a whim.)

Piss off, chum - if you hadn't done such a half-arsed job of drawing up a draft constitution for the EU we wouldn't be in this mess.

Yep, the chap who headed up the Convention on the Future of Europe that produced the unweildy breezeblock of text that was categorically rejected by French and Dutch voters last year (for reasons which no one - no matter what they may claim - has any clue about thanks to the simple "yes / no" set-up) is still trying desperately to resuscitate his baby, despite it having dead and buried for a good six months (full text .pdf):

"the rejection of the constitutional treaty in France was an error which will have to be corrected"

No, mate - the constitution itself was an error which will have to be corrected.

The content of the rest of his talk, delivered at the London School of Economics on Tuesday evening, demonstrates precisely why he was exactly the wrong man for the job of creating a document designed to unite the continent behind a series of set ideals.

He mentions the six-monthly shift in presidency as a flaw in the current arrangement (which it is), but not thanks to practicalities - lack of a coherent policy agenda, inability to present one external face for dealings with the rest of the world, lack of a single spokesman to express the "EU view" on the rare occasions such a thing could be said to exist. Instead, the flaw in the current system is that it "is totally inadequate for building a strong political union of Europe" - when these days it's arguable that a majority even in continental Europe do not want such a thing.

He then expands this assumption of what "the people of Europe" (his phrase) actually want into an insanely outdated teleology that could have been plucked straight from the mouth of one of the EU's overly idealisitic post-war founders:

"The political Union of Europe is not a circle, periodically coming back to the same starting point. It is a trajectory, leading from a starting point to a final goal.

"This trajectory may take time, may face new obstacles, but it is a waste of time and energy to keep on reopening the initial debate.

"The ultimate goal of the political union is to give Europe the institutional framework which will enable it to carry out common policies at European level."

We've already got common policies being carried out at the European level, old chum. But it is by no means certain that "the people of Europe" have any desire to increase the supranational decision-making process. Because - ignoring the differing opinions between different states - on the few occasions when they have been consulted the questions have been far to broad to draw any real conclusions from the answers.

And let's not forget that I'm pro-EU.

He goes on to argue that

"It is no longer a matter of debating what we want to do, but of determining how to do it."

But this is yet another nonsense. The world, as you may have noticed, has changed rather considerably since the 1950s foundation of the Union, and again since the 1980s heyday of negotiations for the current set-up. The Union itself has expanded to 25 members, a number of whom are still recovering from half a century of poverty and oppression. It's no longer a rich boys' club - yet the likes of Giscard d'Estaing would like to carry on as if nothing has changed.

So dear Valéry's assertion that federalism is still the thrust is as idiotic as it is inflammatory. The insistence on a "one size fits all" approach to closer union is insane when looking at the vastly differing concerns of the member states. As it is, recent weeks have seen announcements of core members banding closer together through single energy markets (a logical evolution of the initial Coal and Steel Community); we already have the Eurozone; some member states have opt-outs from the Schengen Agreement.

Much as the thick kid at school shouldn't hold back his brighter classmates, so his cleverer fellows shouldn't force him to move onto the next text book before he is ready. If those who share Giscard d'Estaing's vision of a future Europe are so keen, let them charge ahead and form broad, all-encompassing common policy zones. But if they keep trying to drag the more reluctant members along with them, no one will end up happy. Let us thickies stay in the remedial class practicing our addition while you lot skip off to practice long division in the top set - but don't tease us for not understanding what you're doing, because the dense ones are generally more likely to beat up the smug spods. It'll all end in tears.

Giscard d'Estaing's vision of a future happy, united, federal Europe is, as far as I'm concerned, a rather nice one. But it's not even remotely likely for at least another couple of hundred years, so there's no point in forcing it.

In the meantime, it is not the French and Dutch "No" votes nor British, Danish or Austrian euroscepticism, but the self-satisfied likes of Giscard d'Estaing, with their constant rhetoric of "I'm right, everyone else is wrong, and you're all stupid for not listening to me and doing what I say", that is the single biggest obstacle in the way of the EU's advancement.

You want a federal superstate? Fine, you can dream. But it's not going to happen in your lifetime or mine, so why not accept the facts and shut the hell up? All you're doing in the meantime is stirring up shit and making it a lot harder to sell the realistic potential benefits the EU could offer if it were able to take a time out and re-think its current "one size fits all" strategy.

Next year will see the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome. In half a century much has been achieved, but no matter what Giscard d'Estaing may say, the failures and confusions of the last couple of years would tend to suggest that it is precisely the initial debate which needs to be re-opened. The only thing that seems certain is that the EU is not agreed on its future heading.